age, with the uncouth figures of horses and men, and outstretched hands
that were painted upon it, well-nigh obliterated. The long poles which
supported this squalid habitation thrust themselves rakishly out from
its pointed top, and over its entrance were suspended a "medicine-pipe"
and various other implements of the magic art. While we were yet at a
distance, we observed a greatly increased population of various colors
and dimensions, swarming around our quiet encampment. Moran, the
trapper, having been absent for a day or two, had returned, it seemed,
bringing all his family with him. He had taken to himself a wife for
whom he had paid the established price of one horse. This looks cheap at
first sight, but in truth the purchase of a squaw is a transaction which
no man should enter into without mature deliberation, since it involves
not only the payment of the first price, but the formidable burden of
feeding and supporting a rapacious horde of the bride's relatives, who
hold themselves entitled to feed upon the indiscreet white man. They
gather round like leeches, and drain him of all he has.

Moran, like Reynal, had not allied himself to an aristocratic circle.
His relatives occupied but a contemptible position in Ogallalla society;
for among those wild democrats of the prairie, as among us, there are
virtual distinctions of rank and place; though this great advantage they
have over us, that wealth has no part in determining such distinctions.
Moran's partner was not the most beautiful of her sex, and he had the
exceedingly bad taste to array her in an old calico gown bought from
an emigrant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened
deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the
establishment, in more senses than one, was a hideous old hag of eighty.
Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she.
You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin
that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than
the countenance of a living being, even to the hollow, darkened sockets,
at the bottom of which glittered her little black eyes. Her arms had
dwindled away into nothing but whipcord and wire. Her hair, half black,
half gray, hung in total neglect nearly to the ground, and her sole
garment consisted of the remnant of a discarded buffalo robe tied round
her waist with a string of hide. Yet the old squaw's meager anatomy was
won